In crypto, we see many little dips, and then every few weeks or months we tend to see some very big dips (we might call “corrections” or “crashes”). Both little dips or big dips can make sense to buy depending on your investing strategy. If you are range trading, then little dips are great to buy, if you are a long-term investor, then the bigger dips can be rewarding for building a long position (but of course you have to be careful about how you time your buys).
It was at this time, incidentally, that Coinbase, became worried about stagnant growth of their user base, and decided to offer a truly astounding proposition. They offered to pay anyone who referred a new customer to Coinbase $75 if the new customer purchased just $100 in bitcoin. Coinbase took a 1% transaction fee at the time, meaning that for every $100 in bitcoin a person purchased, Coinbase charged $1. In short, Coinbase would pay out $75 for every $1 a new customer paid them.
Some of the limitations that cryptocurrencies presently face – such as the fact that one’s digital fortune can be erased by a computer crash, or that a virtual vault may be ransacked by a hacker – may be overcome in time through technological advances. What will be harder to surmount is the basic paradox that bedevils cryptocurrencies – the more popular they become, the more regulation and government scrutiny they are likely to attract, which erodes the fundamental premise for their existence.
Now that the benefits of a long term-investment strategy have been made clear, it is also important to consider which cryptocurrencies you want in your long-term portfolio, or how to build your portfolio. Before that, let’s identify some indicators that we can use to measure the potential of the crypto project in the long term. These are just a few indicators that we have identified; feel free to include yours in the comments section below.
Unfortunately, the FDIC is just as dramatically underfunded as banks are. As the FDIC itself acknowledges, it holds enough money to cover just over 1% of all the deposits it insures. In other words, if banks reneged on any more than 1% of all their deposits, the FDIC itself would also fail, and everyone would yet again be left in the dust without recourse.

The appeal for many is the fact that Bitcoin is decentralized, meaning no specific group or governing body has control over it. Instead, it is secured by advanced cryptography, a set of military-grade encryptions, and regulated by a network called the Blockchain. The Blockchain acts as a digital ledger, confirming buyer/seller funds and establishing the order in which transactions take place.

No. 4: Cryptocurrency futures, derivatives, and forward contracts are gaining adoption: The volatility of crypto prices at the beginning of the year dramatically boosted demand for crypto derivative products. With derivatives, investors do not need to hold the underlying crypto asset, but they can still enjoy the potential benefits while possibly minimizing loses, much like they hedge regular currencies. While many exchanges do not yet allow direct sales of Bitcoin, investors can speculate on cryptocurrency pricing by trading futures on exchanges like BitMEX, LedgerX and OKCoin. Institutional investors have used futures contracts to even influence crypto currency prices, especially BTC. In the United States, the move by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Chicago Board of Exchange to offer futures trading has further validated the industry.

NEW YORK, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Grayscale Investments, LLC, the sponsor (the "Sponsor") of the Bitcoin Investment Trust (OTCQX: GBTC) (the "Trust"), today announced on behalf of the Trust that the Trust will resume private placements of shares today. The Trust plans to create shares from time to time in exchange for deposits of Bitcoin. Shares may only be created by certain authorized participants. Pursuant to the terms of the Trust's governing documents, the Sponsor may cause the Trust to cease creations of shares from time to time, including during affiliate sales windows.

It’s important that enough miners keep trying to mine blocks because this is another valuable service miners provide the network. Bitcoin, like gold, is powerful as a store of value because it is decentralized and trustless. There is no one central authority who holds all the power over bitcoin, just like no central authority holds power over gold.

It is important to note that some altcoins innovate by experimenting with useful characteristics Bitcoin does not offer. For instance, Ripple serves as a protocol users can employ to make inter-currency payments with ease, BitShares describes itself as “a fair version of Wall Street,” and Darkcoin hopes to provide a platform for completely anonymous transactions. Some altcoin ecosystems, such as Mastercoin and CounterParty, even utilize the Bitcoin blockchain to secure their platform.

Long downtrends in bear markets can last weeks or months in crypto (and Bull markets can last a long time to)… so be aware of the overall trend! Meanwhile dips in a bull or stagnant market can last hours or days and rallies in a bear market can last hours or days as well. It is general wisdom that one should avoid being a bull in a bear market, and avoid being a bear in a bull market. The trick is understanding what market we are in, in a longterm bear market you’ll want to buy slowly and be willing to take profits, in a short dip in a bull market you may want to spam the buy button. If you don’t know which type of market we are in, slowly creating a position and planning for the worst is far more conservative (assuming the asset is going to zero, and making sure you have enough cash on hand to buy all the way to zero, is about as conservative as it gets).

Steem has a built in inflation of 100% annualy and no coin limit. The platform itself (Steemit) has grown considerably since the Coin launched and currently has over 70,000 users. Steem is the fundamental unit of account on the Steem blockchain, and all other units (Steem power and Steem dollars) derive their value from the value of Steem. There is no need to hold on to Steem in its cryptocurrency form. Instead, it should be used either to purchase Steem dollars, Steem power or be converted to Bitcoins.

Market share: this can be defined as the proportion of market capitalization that a cryptocurrency has. A large market share typically indicates dominance. For example, Bitcoin’s market share is currently 60% (at the time of writing) of total market capitalization of the cryptocurrency space. We can use this as an indicator to determine the long-term viability of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, in our portfolio.
You might buy in to your Ethereum position at $1000, you set your sell position $1300. Your sell order could take days, weeks, months, years or till the end of time to be filled. Once it has been filled, you then take that profit and you roll it over in to a new buy over at, say, $1100. Choosing good targets for your buy and sell orders is crucial if you want to be a successful swing trader but overall swing trading cryptocurrency is pretty easy – set your orders and then just wait.
Here’s what’s Lisk all about: Most developers today rely on centralized giants, such as Google Play and the AppStore to put up their newly developed apps. These giants take much of the profits and attention from these apps, and Lisk believes all this should be going to the developers themselves. This is where its Javascript-based tech comes in. Lisk is incredibly exciting because it aims to offer a decentralized apps platform, one that actually favors the developers, and therefore gives them the bigger piece of the cake. Lisk was previously Crypti, and after proving itself on a community level, it was forked by Max Kordek and Oliver Beddows into Lisk, in 2016.
Disclaimer: Our writers' opinions are solely their own and do not reflect the opinion of CryptoSlate. None of the information you read on CryptoSlate should be taken as investment advice, nor does CryptoSlate endorse any project that may be mentioned or linked to in this article. Buying and trading cryptocurrencies should be considered a high-risk activity. Please do your own due diligence before taking any action related to content within this article. Finally, CryptoSlate takes no responsibility should you lose money trading cryptocurrencies.
When a coin has just skyrocketed by 300%, take profits. HODLing everything after such a major run-up is greed, nothing more. I’ve made this mistake more than once, thinking that it’s completely rational that since a coin’s value has gone up by that much, it will probably continue that way. It won’t. There will always be a correction. When you see a major run-up, like the one in December, it’s wise to start taking profits. How the hell can you buy the dip if you have nothing left to buy it with?
Gold Profits is a global leader in alternative investments. The company serves more than 10 thousand merchant locations, and thousands of investors worldwide. We have merchants in more than 80 countries and investors in 150 countries. We provide investors with opportunities to invest in carefully configured, high interest investment plans. Gold Profits provides investments to global users and payment-processing services to the European largest financial services providers, to the merchant around the corner, and to businesses of all sizes. We ensure that investments will generate earnings stable and risk free, and money moves accurately and securely anytime, anywhere.!
The stop-loss option is an incredibly useful tool to protect your profits, and I highly recommend using it. Stop-losses are tools that automatically sell at, or slightly below, a set price. They help you remove yourself from the equation and prevent you from having to sit in front of your screen the entire day watching charts before deciding what to do.
The most common place where people buy and trade cryptocurrency is on the exchanges. Exchanges are places where you may buy and sell your crypto, using fiat. There are multiple measures to judge the reliability and quality of an exchange, such as liquidity, spread, fees, purchase and withdrawal limits, trading volume, security, insurance, user-friendliness. Out of all these, I find Coinbase as the best exchange hands down. It has a beginner-friendly user interface, and an unbeatable 100% crypto insurance.
This article will be more focused on the important tips that will be most effective for beginners. Take a look at the bullet points below and find the level that best matches your current ability and experience in cryptocurrency trading. If you find that you don’t fall under the beginner category, click on the appropriate link below the bullet points.
This can all be a little confusing and James Altucher gives a great overview in his ebook Cryptocurrencies 101. The way I see it is that each cryptocurrency can be viewed as a public company. You would do your due diligence to figure out a companies potential for growth long term before investing in its stocks and James argues that the same diligence must be applied when investing in crypto. The main question to be asked here is:
Josiah is an assistant editor at CCN. A former ancient and medieval literature teacher, he has been reporting on cryptocurrency since 2014. He lives in rural North Carolina with his wife and children. He holds investment positions in bitcoin and other large-cap cryptocurrencies. Follow him on Twitter @Y3llowb1ackbird or email him directly at josiah.wilmoth(at)ccn.com.
Recommendations and Information found on Cryptopotato are those of writers quoted. It does not represent the opinions of Cryptopotato on whether to buy, sell or hold any investments. Investors should be cautious about any recommendations given. All investors are advised to conduct their own independent research into individual coins before making a purchase decision. Use information at your own risk.

There have been lots of good news for IOTA in the recent couple of week and that caused a big rally in prices and market cap. Some of the alleged partnerships they announced raised some eyebrows and questioning from the community, but nevertheless – the concept and the team make a good combo and IOTA certainly holds a lot of potential in the future.

Hey RV, could we maybe do a bit more of a technical/tradable look at crypto next? This along with John Burbank's section was very general discussion with rehashed netscape/internet analogies, removing middle men which offer nothing new. Focus is always on the transaction coins (admittedly there was more on smart contracts here) but what about other industries for blockchain: decentralized data, personal data, computing power, energy, supply chain etc?
NEW YORK, Dec. 29, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Grayscale Investments, LLC, the sponsor (the "Sponsor") of the Bitcoin Investment Trust (OTCQX: GBTC) (the "Trust"), announced that it has today declared a distribution and established a record date for the distribution of the rights to Bitcoin Segwit2X tokens currently held by the Trust as a result of the fork in the Bitcoin blockchain on December 28, 2017 to shareholders of record ("Record Date Shareholders") as of the close of business on January 8, 2018 (the "Record Date").
Great to get an update on this new asset class. I think any of us who ignore or dismiss cryptos are potentially missing a huge opportunity. As Dan says the risk reward is assymetric so why would anybody with a pragmatic attitude to investment not have at least a minimal exposure? Unfortunately too many people are happy to buy the negative propoganda of yesterday's winners like Jamie Dimon and Charlie Munger for whom the answer to the question of will bitcoin go to zero or a million will never matter! For most of the rest of us, we want to listen to the pros and cons of the narrative. Thanks RVTV for giving this important new asset class airtime. I would welcome more informative videos like this on cryptos.
Market Capitalization and Daily Trading Volume – A cryptocurrency’s market capitalization is the total worth of all coins currently in circulation, and at the time of writing, the total cryptocurrency market capitalization is nearly $139 billion. High market capitalization can indicate a high value per coin. It is important to note that the daily trading volume of currencies is more important than market capitalization.
At Crypto Investing Insider, our passion is trading and our goal is for every member to be successful. We search through hundreds of cryptocurrencies every month and only select a few to move on. We look for innovation, joint ventures, mass adoption and provide in depth technical analysis. We look for coins that have long term potential, but we waste no time selling on spikes, locking in profits, and adding more coins to our portfolio without having to add any more capital.
We believe innovation in open source protocols will be faster and more like an evolutionary system, as developers fork, combine and extend protocol code with minimal friction. In fact, we believe forking will be continuous and native to this process and believe it is a net positive for the industry, though it does introduce complexities for investors.

The crypto market is being constantly flooded with people who just gamble their money without any solid cryptocurrency investment strategy. The reason for that are success stories that usually go viral. You hear about a person who turned a small investment into a life-changing sum and now you want to have skin in the game. What you don’t hear, however, are countless of stories of folks who wasted their precious capital because of making typical rookie mistakes.

After two decades online, I’m perplexed. It’s not that I haven’t had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I’ve met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I’m uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.
As Satoshi notes, bitcoin’s irreversible, trustless nature removes the need for any middlemen to mediate and broker the process of payments from one person to another. Middlemen (e.g. banks and credit card networks) inherently introduce overhead costs and inefficiency into the system, which make transactions — and micropayments in particular — more costly than would otherwise be the case.
Ripple is an open-source digital payment network, and it’s already being used by some of the world’s largest banks – such as the bank of Tokyo and Santandar. XRP has shown significant potential recently and has been turning a lot of heads. Ripple aims to become the go-to tool for banks on a global scale, while still giving an exciting investment opportunity to crypto advocates and solo investors. Ripple has many haters and I’ve been burned by it myself in the past – I sold 30,000 XRP at 20 cents… painful. Still, I did buy them at 3 cents a pop, so it could have been worse. I hold 10,000 XRP today and will hold until 2022.
This isn’t a concern, however, because the bitcoin network runs on consensus, and accepts whichever blockchain is the longest. In practice, this means that whichever blockchain has the most computing power behind it is effectively guaranteed to win, as they’ll be able to calculate the solutions to the hash problems and find new blocks faster than their less powerful competitors.
NEW YORK, Aug. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Grayscale Investments, LLC, the sponsor (the "Sponsor") of the Bitcoin Investment Trust (the "Trust") (OTCQX:GBTC), announced that a fork in the Bitcoin blockchain occurred yesterday, August 1, 2017. The Sponsor is monitoring events relating to the fork and the Bitcoin Cash resulting from the fork. A record date has not been established for the purposes of any distribution that may be made in connection with Bitcoin Cash. The Sponsor will announce a record date, if any, once established.

The cryptocurrency market, which consists of bitcoin and other virtual coins such as ethereum, ripple, litecoin and monero, faced extreme volatility and lost a minimum of $350 billion in value year-to-date due to orders from regulators and hacking. Losing billions of dollars in market cap for cryptocurrencies is not unusual. In December, bitcoin reached a high of $20,000, but dipped to $8,500 by mid-March and is now trading at $6,300.

Had I actually done my research and believed that it was a fair bet to make that one day bitcoins would be worth far more than even the height of the local maximum bubble at the time, it absolutely could have been the right decision to buy in then, even if it crashed later temporarily to $200. What wasn’t right was buying in simply because the price was going up and I had a fear of missing out.
If someone steals your Trezor, they won’t be able to find your coins either, as they’re protected by a PIN that only you know (plus a password if you want to use that feature I mentioned above). You can also recover the coins yourself with the recovery seed the Trezor will give you the first time you use it, which you should store in a super safe location like a safe deposit box somewhere. If you don’t use utilize the password feature, however, keep in mind that anyone who discovers this recovery seed instantly has access to all your coins, and all your other forms of security are for naught. If you enable the password feature, however, they will need your password as well as the recovery seed in able to access your cryptocurrency, which makes it significantly more secure.
This option is most similar to using a credit card but without the associated risks of interest rates. You can use a standard debit card that is connected to your checking account, or you can buy a prepaid card. Using a debit card is widely accepted on most exchanges and instantly transfers, meaning you won’t have to worry about Bitcoin prices fluctuating before the transfer is complete.
The primary difference between options and futures is that options give the holder the right to buy or sell the underlying asset at expiration, while the holder of a futures contract is obligated to fulfill the terms of his contract. In real life, the actual delivery rate of the underlying goods specified in futures contracts is very low as the hedging or speculating benefits of the contracts can be had largely without actually holding the contract until expiry and delivering the good. For example, if you were long in a futures contract, you could go short in the same type of contract to offset your position. This serves to exit your position, much like selling a stock in the equity markets closes a trade.
Debit cards, on the other hand, allow you to buy cryptocurrencies available on the platform pretty much instantaneously. Simply by transferring funds from that card to the platform, you can purchase cryptocurrency in an instant. However, debit cards cannot be used to sell crypto, to deposit money in one’s account, or to withdraw money from one’s Coinbase account. On Coinbase, debit cards can be used exclusively to purchase crypto, and even then, only in smaller amounts. With a debit card, the limit is much lower than with a bank account ($1,125). It should be noted, though, that limits are, or can be, increased by purchasing cryptocurrency and spending a particular amount of money in doing so, either from a bank account or a debit card.

As the Chicago Board Options Exchange launched cash-settled Bitcoin futures trading on December 11, and their rivals Chicago Mercantile Exchange followed suit six day later, prices of both BTC derivatives and the coin itself surged amid an unprecedented wave of publicity. Each Cboe contract was for one Bitcoin, while each CME futures represented five. Both enabled traders to take either long (agreement to buy) or short (agreement to sell) positions, meaning that investors could bet on both increase and decline of Bitcoin price.